Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Trash Talkin'

Annie Proulx, co-writer of Brokeback, is pissed. Sure, she's got every right to be, her movie didn't win the Best Picture Oscar, but shut the hell up already.

She's lashing out now. In a British newspaper article she says that the Academy is "out of touch not only with the shifting larger culture and the yeasty ferment that is America these days, but also out of touch with their own segregated city." Oh, get a grip.

She goes on to say that if you want "smart judging based on merit" that we should skip the Academy Awards and watch The Independent Spirit Awards. Oh, because Brokeback won that Best Pic award. What if they gave it The Squid & The Whale? Would they have been out of touch, or simply awarding the movie they thought was better?

Oh, and she refers to Crash as Trash. How creative. She's a writer??

I mean, c'mon, what a sore freaking loser. She's not even a loser since she did go home with an Oscar.

The thing is - A lot of people liked Crash. so they voted for it. Were they right? That's subjective of course, and it is one of the main problems with these awards. When I watch the Oscars, 8 out of 10 times I'll be routing for a movie that doesn't win, but so freakin what? I would have rather seen Good Night & Good Luck beat both anyway.

For her to go off on Crash is ridiculous. How about this - Maybe it got the awards it deserved - Director, Music & Screenplay (that's you Annie).

Now I'm sure people (voters) were turned off by it, as they were by Crash or the other nominees, which is unfair to any movie. But it's not like one voter makes all the decisions, each voter is going to vote for the movie they liked. And I bet good money that the vote was close as hell, since I think Brokeback had a lot of support. But if Annie's right, why would they give it ANY awards? Why would Hoffman win for best actor playing a gay man? Wouldn't they be turned off by him, too?

Annie knows better, one would think, and for her to lash out like this is just sad, lame, and unprofessional.

Hey Annie, does this mean you're going to give your OSCAR back then? Hmm??

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hear, hear. Can't bear bad losers. Cos that's why she's talking like this - cos she lost. If she'd won Best Picture, she'd be going on about how the Academy made a great choice.

There aren't enough female screenwriters out there - we could do without Annie Proulx spouting off like this and characterising us as bitchy.

Grubber said...

"the yeasty ferment that is America these days"

Don't you guys have shots for that nowadays. We can loan you some penicillin if you are short a few vials.
cheers
Dave.

Patrick J. Rodio said...

Yes, it's just about always a questionable decision, point is she's being a sore loser (when she did actually win anyway).

I mean, think about it, Chicago won for the love of Christ.

Scott the Reader said...

Actually, she was just the writer of the short story the movie was based on, so I'm pretty sure she didn't actually get an Oscar, just the mention that it was based on her work.

If she should be pissed about anything, it should be about the mediocre movie that was made out of her great book The Shipping News.

Patrick J. Rodio said...

Scott is right, I flew off the handle prematurely, bu still, it makes the whole production look like sore losers.

Robert Hogan said...

Fuck yeah Patrick. You posted it before I had a chance to. Rock on.

Rob

Adam Renfro said...

From Bill Maher on the subject:

"If Brokeback Mountain taught us anything, it's that there's nothing wrong with coming in number-two."